


choices: a private exhibition

by Lua



Series: of doomed timelines and could've beens [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Doomed Timelines, F/M, Game Over Timeline, Unbeta'd, mentions of a pale relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-26
Updated: 2016-08-26
Packaged: 2018-08-11 02:59:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7873573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lua/pseuds/Lua
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Terezi considers what possible changes in the timeline could bring the best outcome. It's all about what could've been.</p>
            </blockquote>





	choices: a private exhibition

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SybLaTortue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SybLaTortue/gifts).



There are endless possibilities to consider, but you are bleeding out and your time isn't endless. You think about Aranea and the Hope shenanigans. You think about Aranea pissing off the Empress and their psionic battle. You think about Aranea’s manipulation and mind control. You think about your healed eyes. You go back to what you feel you know best by now: dead trolls. Dead trolls as in your dead friends.

Everybody’s dead.

You are not about to spend your final moments slowly bleeding to death for nothing. You have a plan. Everybody’s dead but they don’t have to be. You have put your foot down and you are going to guide your friends to victory kicking and screaming – but alive! – if you have to. More or less.

Egbert could carry on the instructions and make sure this timeline isn’t such a mess, but you need to find the right mistakes to be corrected. You need to give him the right set of instructions to follow which is fine, you suppose. Except you are bleeding out and that's the sort of thing most people would rather do in peace. Not for the first time, you think about how much easier things could’ve been if Vriska had been alive which was your fault that she wasn't to begin with. Let’s not do this right now, there is no time for that.

You look at the possibilities again.

It’s easier to send John back to correct events that connect back to you. Memory wise, that’s easier because those are your memories, and you also don’t really feel comfortable correcting other people’s mistakes. It’d be pretty hypocritical of you when you couldn’t even clean your own act until you were slowly bleeding to death. Alas, you chose yourself to be the memory path.

You go back. You remember. You search and explore the possibilities. In the end, it all goes back to the time night of murderous rampages.

If only Vriska never killed Tavros. If only Eridan never killed Feferi. If only Kanaya never killed Eridan. If only Gamzee never killed Equius and Nepeta. If only you never killed Vriska. You have all made mistakes.

Vriska has to live, but stay in the meteor. You know what happens if things played out on her terms. You look at the timelines again, searching. You try to put aside your own feelings because this is an objective search for the best possible outcome. If Vriska stays alive, she could make a difference in how things played out. You can see it.

Maybe you have been looking at it all wrong. Look at where your decisions took you. Maybe you should’ve looked for a moirail to keep you in check back then, so you wouldn’t go killing one of your friends and then ending up in the land of bad choices you are in now. You think about it. You seriously consider how your romantic life could save the universe and you try not to laugh at that.

It's pretty funny, anyway. You almost tell John, just because.

It's thinking about it that you see the version of you that grew closer to Sollux. What you see is potentially pale.

You aren’t bleeding any faster than you were before, and you’re curious. You also have legitimate reasons to explore the idea.

It’s different because you never lost your glasses back then. You never returned to the computer lab and never got knocked out by Kanaya. You troll Karkat, but the nitwit has you blocked so you set off to find him. Everyone seems to be very busy now that there is a murderer on the lose, you notice.

You find Karkat freaking out in the ectobiology lab, but what seems to be yet another crime scene turns out to be a beaten up Sollux. You had never seen – hehehe – Karkat so freaked out despite the fact anything can set him off, and it isn’t until Sollux wakes up, blind and toothless and very okay with a lot of things that you get some useful information out of them.

You still go off to look for Vriska, but her body count is down to one and not four, possibly five. She dies all the same because you are set on keeping your friends alive. As many of them as you can.

Vriska dies. Sollux dies. History repeats itself except a few things change.

When Aradia and Sollux join your group again, half dead Sollux stays behind. Karkat doesn’t even beg all that much this time around. The body of the blind Sollux you were going to teach how to be blind still goes missing. It’s all almost the same, but not really.

Life on the meteor is very different with Sollux around. You don’t hang around with the humans so much. Dave is still pretty cool. Karkat is still pretty awkward. Sollux, on the other hand, is a lot more okay with a lot more things than he used to be.

He tells you the noises are gone and when he explains that the voices of the dead kept muffling his thoughts, it makes a little more sense Sollux used to flip moods so much. Not that being half dead fixes everything. Some of that is just his personality which is cool, you think. You end up talking to him about how killing Vriska fucked you up. You always supposed he was probably pretty fucked after killing Aradia so he would get it and turns out he does.

It's not as odd as you'd expect to sit on a pile with Sollux and talk your feelings out. It also didn't come with a formal request for a pale date, and you take that as an opportunity to make Karkat flip out over proper courting habits and how you aren't all savages.  

You see how bad Sollux is a being half blind at first. You mean, it has to be somewhat different from seeing like you do when you are just blind instead. It’s still funny it almost makes you wish fully blind Sollux would have survived his heroic moment so he could be twice as funny with how terrible he is at following your very clear instructions. You think he’d appreciate your desire for him to suck twice as much. You're full of good intentions.

You don’t spiral out control in grief and self-loathing over the death of you caused. You don’t second guess yourself as much. You did what you had to do. Your sight is yours and maybe you are as bad as Sollux because you are half blind, too. It’s fine. Things are surprisingly fine.

It kinda rubs off on you. You are okay with a lot of things, too.

But when push comes to shove, a half dead powerful psionic means jackshit against grimdark first guardian powers that teleport you into the new session where everything goes to hell.

You see what could be and you know what needs to be. You pick the path that leads back to Vriska.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading this!
> 
> it turned out being a really quick oneshot of a prompt that i want to explore more, but i wanted to write erisolsprite more and i had to pick one ;a; it also turned out sadder than i meant to?


End file.
